This is Steven Salzberg's blog on genomics, pseudoscience, medical breakthroughs, higher education, and other topics, including skepticism about unscientific medical practices. Here's where I can say what I really think about abuses and distortions of science, wherever I see them.

Why are we growing corn to fuel our cars? Three reasons why ethanol is a bad idea.

Most of us are driving around right now in cars powered by a combination of gasoline and ethanol. Ethanol is a fuel alternative produced from corn (mostly), and it has been touted for years as cleaner, carbon-neutral alternative to gas.

The problem is that ethanol’s benefits have been greatly exaggerated, leading to Congressional regulations that required ever-increasing amounts of ethanol in our gasoline supply. The government requirement goes back to 2005, when gas prices were much higher and the U.S. was in the midst of the Iraq war. Ethanol was supposed to be a clean way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The growing mandate for ethanol has instead created an enormous, artificial demand that has had unintended consequences, many of them bad.

Politicians still love ethanol. In the 2016 presidential campaign, several candidates came out in support of continuing the corn-based fuel program, hoping this position would win them votes in the Iowa caucuses. Iowa is a big corn state.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, mandating the use of ethanol is a terrible policy. Here are three reasons why.

1. Ethanol lowers your gas mileage–a lot. Ethanol only has about 2/3 the energy content of gasoline, meaning it simply cannot provide the same amount of power per gallon (or liter) as gas. E85 fuel, which uses 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, is widely available, and some gas stations now offer no alternative. Consumer Reportsput E85 to the test, and found that highway mileage decreased by 29% and city mileage by 22%. Car and Driver ran their own tests and found a 30% drop in mileage on E85. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, nearly all gas sold in the US today has 10% ethanol–much less than in E85, but still providing lower fuel efficiency than straight gasoline.

2. Using ethanol doesn’t reduce carbon emissions. The main argument for using ethanol is that because the carbon contained within it was recently put in the ground, burning ethanol (and releasing that carbon) is carbon neutral. Compared to extracting oil, which has lain in the ground for millions of years, growing corn and extracting ethanol puts far less carbon back in the atmosphere.

“failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels.”

When the scientists accounted for these land-use changes, they found that using corn to produce ethanol will double greenhouse emissions over a 30-year period. Switchgrass is only slightly better, increasing emissions by 50%. As the Union of Concern Scientists explains that “sustainable production is possible” only if we stop making ethanol from corn.

Admittedly this is a complex topic, but it seems that ethanol-from-corn simply doesn't reduce carbon emissions. Thus the entire justification for using ethanol to fuel our cars is unsound.

3. Increasing fuel efficiency means we’ll never be able to meet Congress’s mandated levels of ethanol usage, not unless we sacrifice even more gas mileage. Automakers have made great progress in producing more fuel-efficient cars, and the growing electric car market (Tesla!) mean that we’re using less and less fuel each year. This is terrific for reducing carbon emissions, but it means that Congress’s original mandate to use more ethanol becomes far harder to satisfy.

What happened was that back in 2005, Congress told us how to solve a problem (carbon emissions from our cars), instead of just encouraging us to solve it using innovative new ideas. Corn producers and their government representatives—governors, Senators, Representatives—all got behind the ethanol “solution” because they saw increased profits in it. Now we are stuck with a non-solution that, as the NY Times recently put it, is “a boon for Iowa and a boondoggle to the rest of the country.” It’s long past time to end the ethanol mandate.

2 comments:

Thank you for taking some time to write this post. Ethanol is a great alternative to gasoline and it works as a cheaper and more effective way of using fuel for many different purposes. You can make ethanol all by yourself, using and combining different ingredients, most of which you can find in your own home, along with minor equipment. See more http://survival-mastery.com/diy/how-to-make-ethanol.html